I Will Vote Remain Because I Love My Mum

After voting tomorrow I shall fly down to take part in an alternative online referendum results programme from the Ecuadorian Embassy with Julian Assange, to give you a chance to hear a discussion of the results without having to listen to yet more neo-liberal spokesmen spouting establishment propaganda.

It is no secret I am an enthusiast for the EU. However as an ardent Scottish nationalist it has of course crossed my mind that it might be a plan to vote tactically for Brexit, to provoke a new independence referendum.

I have decided against this for two reasons. First, there is no way the Establishment is going to allow Brexit to happen. And second, I love my mum, who is English and moved back from Inverness to Norfolk following the death of my father a decade ago. I wish England and the English nothing but well. An independent Scotland inside the EU would be disadvantaged by having its only land border with an ailing England outside the EU.

Having successfully kept the EU debate off the blog, I think for the last day we can fill our boots. I like the EU because it has in truth burnt internal national borders. I like the EU because we cannot control EU internal immigration. I love all the vibrant Europeans who have moved here, and the fact I can leave whenever I wish and settle in Lodz or Naples. Without the EU immigrant influx, the UK would have experienced zero economic growth for the last ten years.

There is one anti-EU argument I detest worse than anything Nigel Farage has ever said. It is the “left wing” argument that immigration depresses wages for British workers.

This argument is pure racism. It presupposes that the chance that British workers might get £10 rather than £9 an hour, is more important than giving a Romanian worker moving here the chance to get £9 an hour rather than £3. Just because one is British and one is Romanian. Racism, pure and simple.

There is of course a much more sophisticated argument about the massive economic boost given by migration increasing demand in the economy, including for labour. If migration harmed an economy the United States and Germany would be the poorest countries in the world, yet they are not.

But I prefer to point out the inherent racism of the Little Englander wages argument, because it pricks the “left-wing” credentials of those who make it.

I am a strong internationalist and I view the EU as the most solid achievement of internationalism to date. The danger of the EU has always been that its internal freedoms would be accompanied by barriers to the world outside, but that is decreasingly true in the economic field as trade barriers have fallen radically, especially to the developing world. It is only an increasing problem in the migration field with the EU reacting to the refugee crisis – whose acuteness is a direct result of neo-con war policy destabilising the Islamic world.

The EU has great supra-national institutions. These are broadly politically neutral. They are used for neo-liberalism at the moment because at the moment most European governments, including the British one, are neo-liberal. But neo-liberalism will not prevail forever. Its consequences in terms of economic insecurity for the many and an exponential increase in extreme wealth for the few, are already undermining popular consent. As only a few diehard economists cling to trickledown theory, the obvious consequences for social stability have started to undermine the intellectual confidence of the elite and their propagandists.

To put that another way, the cleverer rich (ie not Philip Green) have started to realise that if things go on this way, they will be decorating lamp-posts.

The pendulum swings back towards social democracy. Trade treaties with clauses demanding the breaking up of state ownership will fall into abeyance for a few more decades. They are in any event by no means confined to the EU. Banking regulation will, bit by bit, strengthen. Action on tax havens will accrue incrementally.

The EU is a powerful potential force for economic regulation, and we will see it being put to that proper purpose again, with a little patience.

This analysis suggests that the pain of Brexit would be borne by all income levels and that the middle income British would suffer slightly more than their poorer and wealthier counterparts.

MrLiberty

And slaves will have a tough time adjusting to their new freedom. Does that mean we should not set them free? It is EXACTLY the same argument. In the end, the rich who are only rich because of the crony capitalism that the EU reinforces will either have to succeed on their own, or count on British government cronyism as they used to before the EU. Meanwhile, the middle class and the poor at least will not have to pay for millions of refugees living parasitically off their hard work. Britain already has enough of those types.

Fee-fi-fo-fum

This guy is a Jew.

hashtag_agitated

Please tell me this is satire.

Nick Smegg

I’m voting Leave and Leave will win tomorrow.

TruthTime

Come on Craig. You know full well the EU doesn’t even have balls to abolish and/or arrest Central Bankers, just one of many issues at the center of all this. The problems WILL continue. I’m just glad at least Iceland laughed at the EU and ripped up their application and arrested bankers.

MrLiberty

The British do not have the COURAGE to support independence. That is the bottom line. I love my mum and would love to see the “united” States broken up into 50 sovereign independent states during her lifetime so that she might see the beginning of the restoration of freedom before she dies – and me too. Being a slave to government is bad enough when it is your own government. Being a slave to a foreign authority is the worst. But I guess the British are getting a taste of their own medicine after subjugating so many foreigners over the centuries.

He-Man

This is a joke, right? How about the fact that the EU has been an utter catastrophe? Skyrocketing debt, social collapse, decline in health, mandates from an unelected body in Brussels? What more evidence do you need?

He-Man

The EU has great supranational institutions? I just about spit out my evening coffee..

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